NETBALL: Dearns' world view

ANENDRA SINGH
It was the 1990s and some umpires dreaded walking on to the netball courts as her imposing frame towered over her opponents in front of the hoop.
Even today some of the whistleblowers of the yesteryear remind Tanya Dearns (nee Cox) what she was like in an era when netballers slept until one hour before the big game.
"I used to argue with them a lot sometimes and it used to get into my head. There are critics everywhere in sport and you've just got to handle it. I still get it from old umpires who say 'Oh you used to be a real witch to umpires, you know'," a grinning Dearns, 40, tells SportToday before heading off to Auckland to watch the netball World Championship starting on Saturday. While there, she will write exclusive columns for our readers for the duration of the week-long event.
"I used to get a bit of stick because I'm quite reactive towards umpires and I suppose my reputation precedes me. I used to say 'I'm tough but I'm not rough'.
"I guess because of the size I was, there weren't a lot of other big girls playing. So a lot of what umpires perceived me to be doing, I didn't do. It wasn't until later into my career that umpires started taking more interest in teams training and say 'hey, you don't do that' and I said yes, 'don't look at where my hand is, look at where my feet are'," says the former Silver Fern defender.
Hawke's Bay international umpire Pauline Sciascia was doing her first national championship game one year and Dearns found out later that the umpire was scared to get too close to her.
"She apparently came around the base line and back to the circle and I turned around and said to her: 'Welcome, it's nice to see you down here' (near the circle)."
Dearns was born in Rotorua but, thanks to her father, John Cox, a former New Zealand Post employee, the Coxes led a nomadic life, cutting a trail to Tauranga and even settling in Hastings for four years when she was six years old.
Mum Jeanette, the office administrator at Peterhead School, Hastings, introduced Dearns to netball and went on to coach her until she was 13. In a united effort with a fellow teacher, Lance Nixon, the pair were instrumental in forming what is now the Hastings Junior Netball Council.
By the time Dearns was 12, Auckland beckoned and she found herself at Waitakere College.
It was only a matter of time before the lanky teenager, oozing natural talent, caught the eye of selectors and she eventually went through myriad age-group teams.
Eager to quench her desire for top-level competition, Dearns drifted from second divisioners Tauranga and gravitated south toward Wellington, where she wowed the netball faithful for 16 years.
She made the New Zealand under-21 team in 1987. Soon after, she jetted off to Melbourne to play basketball for the Nunawading Spectres (later through a series of mergers they became South Melbourne Dragons) but that flirtation did not last.
Dearns proudly slipped on the Silver Fern bib from 1989-98 but took a self-imposed timeout from 1994-95 to coach. The former PIC (Pacific Island Church) player ended up coaching Wellington NPC teams for two years.
On retiring, she married Hawke's Bay-born Grant Dearns, who is the current Hawke's Bay Magpies trainer.
Through natural progression, the former netballer's parents moved to her husband's hometown of Napier more than three years ago to be close to their grandchildren, Warner, five, and Kyra, three.